


but i would stand it just for you

by raiindust



Series: four walls don't make a home [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A canon shaped space, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Without the unnecessary destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 08:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16133960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiindust/pseuds/raiindust
Summary: Raven is a little surprised when Emori shares the news with everyone. Theoretically, she understands how something like this could happen. They are, after all, young adults, and young adults will do things that lead to this kind of complication.Raven and Bellamy explore what exactly family means.





	but i would stand it just for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/gifts).



> For semele, who prompted: canon-verse, anything exploring parenthood. This is kind of pear shaped, and for a hot minute I wasn't going to post this in the collection, but then decided to screw it and run with it. It certainly explores some of the things you wanted, in a round about way, but took itself in it's own direction and eventually I just kind of went with it, so hopefully that's okay. Also, it doesn't rely at all on reading the first work in the series. The just kind of ended up linking themselves well together so I threw them in. 
> 
> Unbeta'ed because why not, but it's been reread many times, so any mistakes can be treated as wonderful little bumps in the stories road.

Raven is a little surprised when Emori shares the news with everyone. Theoretically, she understands how something like this could happen. They are, after all, young adults, and young adults will do things that lead to this kind of complication. It’s exactly why adolescents on the Ark were forced to sit through a two-hour presentation about the consequences of sex in the year they turned seventeen and then given their implant as their birthday surprise, because nothing says you’re on the cusp of adulthood like having someone else take control of potential mistakes before they’re allowed to happen.

 

On the ground though, pregnancy happened without any such meticulous control, and more than once, if the family were blessed. The word sibling wasn’t a long-forgotten relic, but a living, breathing part of their culture, revered even, for sister, brother, sibling meant more life was slowly being breathed back into their broken world.

 

And Emori, as a Grounder, was free from the rules that dictated their lives on the Ark. And seeing as Murphy, being a man, wasn’t viewed as a threat by the Council, given that _women_ carried the child so obviously men had _nothing_ to do with conception-

 

Well.

 

Credo would be just shy of three years old when it welcomes its first child that was both _ark_ and _ground_.

 

And for Raven, that meant everything would change, because something sparks, with that announcement. Slow and steady, but undeniable. They’ve worked hard to make _Credo_ safe for the people who chose to live within their boundaries -- developed relationships with their closest neighbours, created a strong trade culture for people who pass through. There is more to the world than the thirteen clans to the east; more life, more beauty, more everything than they ever expected.

 

She’s twenty-one now, and finally settled in her own skin: no longer thinking of herself in terms of _then_ and _now_ but just as Raven, practised mechanical technician, and technology developer of their settlement. And yet, as soon as the concept of ‘baby’ sets in, something stretches and snaps deep inside her, and she finds herself unable to settle.

 

Bellamy notices first, because of course he does. It’s his thing, (with everyone, admittedly, but especially Raven), this ability to break down an otherwise imperviable exterior with a simple glance.

 

It’s never _simple_ , of course: it’s loaded with a hundred questions that pierce her skin and filter down into her soul. But she can’t face him, not yet, so she looks away, and mumbles an excuse to disappear into her workshop for another two-day marathon of “What can I improve next?”

 

And he lets her, because that’s what Bellamy Blake does best. Gives her space to breath, space to think, space to be.

 

(The last time she had done this, he’d suggested she stop sleeping in the cot they’d wrangled for her work space and _finally_ move in to the small house he’d built for her, for them. She didn’t see him for three days, didn’t speak to him for another five, but he’d smiled all the same, big and bright and wide, when she’d finally muttered, “Fine,” and threw her small pack of belongings at him to put away.)

 

Except this time, she’s not sure it will be enough. Emori is starting to show, her belly stretching long and low, blooming, (“Glowing,” Murphy uses in this sickeningly sweet tone that sounds all kinds of wrong falling from his mouth,) and it makes Raven’s whole body tense and tighten and twist because it’s obvious, so glaringly obvious that Emori’s body isn’t just _hers_ any more, it belongs to a shared space, to something is that is hers _and_ his and _theirs_ ; a completely new and unique entity growing day by day, minute by minute and then --

 

It would be easier, she thinks, if they could have it out here and now. If Bellamy were still the same smart-ass boy pretending to be a man who grabbed her throat and snarled for the kill -- if that same anger still thrummed through his veins, the way fear still pulses through hers --

 

Only it doesn’t. Time on the ground has stripped him of his hubris and left him generous and kind. He’s their leader, unequivocally, resolutely, despite the fact he rejects that title, and all the associations that fall with that word. And yet, he’s the first one up each morning before the suns had a chance to rise, and the last to bed each night, ensuring everyone is rested, everything is safely put away. He’s the one toiling in the fields across the long summer days and stitching their old tattered clothes in the dead of the night. His heart beats through every inch of Credo, a symbol, she knows, of redemption he doesn’t think he deserves, even still, even now, as they expand and thrive and life, it seems, begins anew.

 

Yes. It would be easier if he still believed in the power of _“Whatever the hell we want,”_ , but she sees him, more than anyone might actually suspect. The way his eyes linger, when a family passes through, when some of the younger children (left parentless, when the Ark fell in pieces and crashed and burned to the ground) seek him out because he’s patient and gentle and most importantly, more present than the parents whose faces they are desperate to remember.

 

But her skin is finally hers; the shape of it finally fitting in a way that it hasn’t since she could fly between stars and stare into the vast emptiness of everything without her heart throbbing in the darkness.

 

(It’s coming, you see. The time bomb ticking down to twenty-two, when the last piece of protection will disintegrate into her skin and lay her bare for a future that she’s not ready for.

 

And worse--

 

Not sure she will ever want.)

 

So, she stays away, letting the days flow into night and back to day, fingers thrumming against cold metal, because this she can control, this she can fix.

 

Only Bellamy Blake is older now; and he’s had the audacity to even become a little wise. So, when he seeks her out, on the fourth night, and she sees his shadow fall into the fading light of the night, he waits, patiently, for her to break first.

 

(She makes him wait, out of spite, until she’s sure there is nothing more she can tinker with on the walkie that simply needed a battery charge. Still, it’s gratifying when he huffs, the knowledge that she can still rile him to the point of frustration, even if it’s a muted version that’s sprung from his older, wiser age.)

 

“Can I help you?” Her voice is tight, tart, controlled. She refuses to meet his eyes, because if she does, she knows she will melt, so instead she lets her eyes linger on the quickly dwindling list of things she needs to do.

 

“Sheer will won’t make it any longer,” He supplies, because of course he can read her even when her eyes are trained on her messy scrawl. He takes a breath, and steps into the room. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

 

“I’ve been busy.” Raven disputes, still not meeting his gaze. “The chill is already setting in, and more bodies to warm means more heating devices.”

 

The excuse is weak, they both know it, because summer is only on the edge of fading, but her voice never wavers, refusing to show even an ounce of weakness.

 

“Bullshit.” He states, and she can see him shrug his shoulders in the shadows.

 

Another step brings him closer to her, and normally she’d welcome it, the way his body covers and crowds hers, enveloping her tiny frame completely. But the thought of his touch, with everything else spinning through her mind makes her stomach flip and turn and for a moment she worries she might be sick at the thought.

 

“Raven, this is about--” He begins, and she snaps, the coils wound so tightly she visibly sags in her chair and she tries to turn from him.

 

Desperate for him to stop, she pleads with him. “Please, don’t say it Bell.”

 

But even though he too has grown into his skin, his impulsivity is something he refused to completely let go.

 

“Emori is having the baby, Raven. Emori. Not _you._ ” His voice is soft, and gentle, and if she turned, even an inch, she knows he would be there, waiting, as always, perched on the edge of her life.

 

Quietly, it falls from her lips. “I know. I know. But-”

 

“But nothing.” He says, and instantly his arms are there, twisting around her sides and pulling her to him, and she feels safe, feels free, feels _home_ , for the first time in days. “I don’t know where you got this idea that I’m desperate for kids but-”

 

“Please,” She scoffs into his shoulder, cutting him off. “You _swoon_ over every little thing that comes up to your waist. You _gush_ at the sound of them laughing. And don’t even try to deny that you, Lincoln and Miller haven’t already begun to figure out the best way to construct a crib for the spawn of Satan.”

 

(And she’ll never, ever admit it. But saying those things; letting the words spill from her lips lifts something from her heart. Because as much as Bellamy knows her skin by touch, as much as he knows her heart by sound, she knows him just the same.)

 

“You want kids, Bell. Maybe not now, maybe not next year. But one day, you’ll want them; and that’s okay. That’s you. But--” A breath, a pause, and then, “I’m not sure it will ever be me.”

 

Raven waits, for the inevitable flinch, the recoil, the cringe, but when he laughs against her, she’s well and truly shocked.

 

“You’re laughing?” It’s stupid, she knows, pointing out the obvious, but it’s so loud and booming and _real_ that she doesn’t know what else to do. “Why are you laughing at me? This is _serious_ Bellamy. A fundamental flaw that I’m not sure will ever change, that splits people up. I mean, just look at--” She begins, but gulps back her words, because that’s a moment and a memory from _before_ ;

 

and _before_ is something that lives in the silence between them even now, years after beginning again.

 

But between his dying laughs, and her bated breath, the silence of now seems as good a place as any to let it out.

 

“My mother, she didn’t want me. Not really.” Raven begins, looking away from his gaze to a fixed point on the wall. His face is too distracting, all freckled cheeks and softened gaze; to get this out she needs clarity and order. “There was a mix up, with her implant. A bad batch, as it were.” The words tumble ungracefully from her tongue, despite their familiarity that haunted her in dreams.

 

(“You’re nothing but the product of a bad batch, Raven. Nothing but a problem caused by some cheap mistake that they refused to solve.”)

 

“It was my birthright, I suppose.” A hollow laugh escapes while tears brim. “The knowledge that I was an error, rather than a choice. And I just-” She stumbles over her words, because they aren’t there, not yet, perhaps, not ever.

 

Instead she draws an uneven breath and steadies herself reaching down to the hem of his shirt and palming the strip of skin that peeks out. It steadies her. “Your mother had so much love she risked everything for two; my mother couldn’t even muster an ounce of like for one. I’m barely built to love myself, how could I even start loving something else that takes up so much of me?”

 

Again, she waits, for what this time, she’s not sure. It’s uncharted territory between them, something new and different and unknown.

 

(and she thinks that’s what scares her most, when the rest of him is a map she could follow with her eyes closed to still find home.)

 

But he surprises her (still, even now) when he tugs her close again, pulling her against him until their breath mingles into one, and she’s not sure where hers ends and his begins.

 

“You know, my mom never asked me how I felt. She just pushed Octavia into my arms and told me that this was my sister, my responsibility. It’s a lot to ask of a full-grown adult. Imagine asking it of a seven-year-old?”

 

It’s the first time he’s spoken against his mother, when any other time she was mentioned it was full of warmth; but then, it’s also the first time her choice had born relevance to his future life. It’s not like he can change the past (and she knows he actively works against thinking that way; all the choices he had made eventually led them here, and Raven knows Bellamy wouldn’t change that for anything) but still, she feels like this weight has suddenly fallen from his shoulders too: a confession of a secret that’s lingered in his mind as long as he’s been ‘brother’.

 

“I loved my mother, Raven. I loved her so much. And I love Octavia too. But sometimes it’s--” A shake of his head, and a deep sigh that tells her everything she could ever need to know about the man she’s chosen to love: he will always do whatever it takes to keep the ones he loves safe.

 

“It’s like you never had a choice. That until now, you’ve lived a path that was chosen for you-” She pauses, and the words hang quietly between them.

 

“Not by me.” He finishes, and smiles, because out of all the people in the world he could’ve shared this with, her shared it with her, because she knows what it’s like to live your life with the choices of others weighing heavy on your shoulders.

 

“Bell, you know--” Raven begins, without a clear point of where to end. For so long it had been her and Finn against the world. And then the world had grown and shrunk all within a matter of weeks until her loneliness had stretched her too far and too thin and she’d almost given up.

 

Almost.

 

If it weren’t for him, swooping in like some asshole knight in shining armour, she just might have.

 

And she just wants him to know that she can be there to save him too.

 

But instead, he laughs again, full and booming just like before. Her brow furrows in annoyance, but before she can protest, he’s pressing his lips full against hers then pulling sharply away.

 

“Babies eat Raven, all the damn time. And when they aren’t hungry, they want to cry, about one thing or another, and unless it’s because they are hungry again, you never really know why. And they take up space, so much bloody space, for such a small thing. They carve out every second of every minute of every hour of your life, because when they aren’t attached to you, they are still in your every waking thought, because what if they sleep on their belly, what if something falls across their face, what if, what if, what if, until you lose your damn mind.”

 

Finally, he remembers to breath, and this time _she_ can’t help but laugh, little giggles trickling from her mouth because _before_ has suddenly turned in to _now_ , and memories of the past are resurfacing as something new.

 

“Not to mention we’d probably never have sex again, or at least not for an extended period of time.” Bellamy adds, fingers flexed against her hipbone, gently moving up and down. “And Raven, I really, _really_ like having sex with you.”

 

It’s enough for the pressure to pop and release, her body moving flush against his, lips capturing a waiting kiss, and it feels just like coming home.

 

They’re lost in it, for some time, lost in each other and movements that are natural and gliding and fit now like a second skin. Her hand reaches up to thread through his hair, his tongue pushes out, rough against hers, their sighs turn to moans turn to groans of pleasure.

 

(Because _yeah_ , she’s a pretty big fan of the sex too.)

 

Eventually though, their neediness quells into familiarity, and they draw back from each other, flushed and full after being famished for so long. Still, it’s not enough, and Raven knows deep down, what needs to be said.

 

“If, if one day--”

 

But his finger against her lips stops her in her tracks.

 

 “If it comes down to it,” Bellamy begins, his voice gravelly and worn and so very well kissed. “In a year or two, or maybe even ten, well, this is always something that _we_ can discuss. And do. Together.”

 

There’s a certainty behind his voice, a clarity that tells her that just as she fears the word _mother_ , the idea of _child_ , that he himself fears it too.

 

“It’s not just something you do alone, Raven,” He reiterates, his fingers lifting gently to press against her cheek. “It’s something we will face _together_ , okay?”

 

She sighs and smiles, then pushes her lips against his in reply.

 

“Okay.”


End file.
